The Very First Sin: It’s Not What You Think! 

 

I grew up in an area of the country where Roman Catholic teaching has such a stronghold that even the public school system obeyed its teachings.  I remember as a young girl, our school lunches every Friday were either pizza or fish sandwiches.  In our home, our Italian Roman catholic stay-at-home mother never served any kind of meat (beef, pork, or chicken) on Fridays.  (Fish was okay, somehow that’s not considered meat.)  When that is engrained in you from childhood, even after having left that erroneous teaching some thirty years ago, some habits just stick.  What erroneous teaching is that? 

   I’d love to get into why Good Friday isn’t really Good Friday, but rather good Wednesday, but that will have to be for another post.  Right now, my point is even though I have not been a Yankee Roman Catholic since I was twenty-six years old, when I took out the left over London Broil to put it in the mini-crock pot for tonight’s dinner, I could sense my Italian grandmother rolling over in her grave, and I could hear my mother’s voice telling me not to make that for dinner tonight.  Even though she left the Roman Catholic church long before I did, her tradition stayed with her until she passed from this life  five years ago.  

We are told by Jesus that the Jewish teachers of the Law were forsaking GOD’s commands for man’s tradition, and here we are over 2,000 years later and our religious leaders are doing it again, but you could never convince them of that.  Once tradition takes that kind of stranglehold on a sect, it becomes as sacred to them as Scripture.  The practice of Christianity today has become such a cut and paste religion that one can hardly recognize the actual true teachings of Jesus.  I’m going to venture a guess that he ate meat on Fridays, in fact, I’m quite certain he did.  Friday evening meal during the first century sabbath was called the Shabbat.  So, why aren’t we doing exactly as Jesus did when we are supposed to live as he lived?  I’ll tell you; it goes all the way back to the very first sin, somewhere between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3, and we are not privy to having heard or seen it, but it is surely implied. 

When the woman was approached by the serpent, she was questioned about GOD’s Word to them about what they were really allowed to partake in as far as eating in the Garden, and like a true child of GOD, when taught wrong, she did what she was told up to a certain degree.  What was she taught?  What did she believe and who taught her that “truth?”  No man alive today witnessed it, but we can assume from her answer that the man changed the Word of GOD to the woman who was not even created when it was given.  She was taught to not even touch the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or she would die, so when she did touch it and she did not die, well, she assumed that the man lied.  He didn’t lie, he only added to the Word of GOD.  So, there, my friends, is the very first sin.  It wasn’t touching it, it wasn’t eating it, or even being tempted by it, but it was lying about the Word of GOD.  

This is why religious practice became so warped in the days Jesus walked the earth. Long gone were the strict commands of the 613 Mosaic Laws, but alive and well was Halacha, a combination of Rabbinical teachings with a spattering of the Torah mixed in, creating thousands of laws and rules that no man could keep track.  Does it sound vaguely familiar?  That is man and government today, creating so many laws, regulations and rules that it’s easy to break them, because there are too many to know.  GOD made it so easy for us. He gave us the Torah, which means instructions. Yet, for some reason, we seem to feel that is not sufficient, and we have to add to that, if not with additional laws and restrictions, but with man’s traditions also.  Judaism became a cut and paste religion in Jesus’s day, just as much as Christianity has become today.  Scripture is clear, what has been will be again, there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9).   

Following the Torah to the letter of the law is impossible, it always has been, hence Grace, but a grace that came long before Jesus did.  Even Jesus could not follow it exactly as written, as he was not a woman, nor was he married, hence he could not perform the duties of a woman or a husband.  The Levitical priests had to offer sacrifices daily, hence even on the Sabbath, they had to do their duties.  Do you see what I am getting at?  Grace and Truth came long before John 1, it started in Genesis 3.  Adam lied about what GOD told him to the woman.  He added to the Word of GOD, hence GOD set a plan in motion to give grace to the first man who broke His Law and it extends all the way to the last man born on earth, if he wants it.  The problem with mankind is, he doesn’t really want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but what he adds to it because it makes sense to him.  Anything that  makes logical sense to sinful man is usually what takes precedence over what GOD says. 

Some of us want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but in order to find it, we have to search and search and search every breathing day we have on this planet.  We are rare, those of us who are not satisfied with man’s truth.  For some, C’s get degrees, and that’s good enough.  For others, nothing but Summa Cum Laude is considered a true accomplishment.  I’ve never been a mediocre kind of person, hence why my circle of friends is about the size of a period (.).   I’ll never achieve perfection, I’ll always search for the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and how blessed I am that Grace is there as a safety net for when as a flawed human being, I mess up.  Having the net there is good for all of us, but I’d rather  just keep climbing until I reach the prize for which the Apostle Paul tells us to keep pursuing.